Intense fighting and multiple casualties engulf the Union and Confederate troops fighting the Chancellorsville, Va. in early May 1863. The Union infantrymen are deployed in a typical two-line regimental formation.

The regimental ranks thinned by 18 men in mid-morning on Sunday, May 3, 1863, the 5th Maine Infantry boys may have figured the fighting was over for the day.

For them, the blood-letting had scarcely begun.

After Union regiments captured Marye’s Heights that day, orders summoned Col. Clark S. Edwards and the 5th Maine to rejoin their brigade, commanded by Brig. Gen. Joseph Bartlett. Lined up on the Bowling Green Turnpike, the brigade marched through Fredericksburg to the Heights in rear of the City,” Edwards informed Maine Attorney General John Hodsdon in a May 9 letter.

Assigned to the Sixth Corps commanded by Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick and the First Division commanded by Brig. Gen. William T.H. Brooks, the 5th Maine boys rested a while. “Then we moved forward on the [Orange] plank road towards Salem Heights,” Edwards wrote.

With Joe Hooker and the Army of the Potomac locked in combat with Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia around the Chancellors House, Sedgwick planned to march west to help crush Lee. Leading the advance was the First Division, with Bartlett’s brigade — the 5th Maine, the 16th New York Infantry, the 27th New York Infantry, the 96th Pennsylvania Infantry, and the 121st New York Infantry — as the spear point.

Lee maneuvered to prevent Sedgwick’s juncture with Hooker. As Bartlett’s brigade probed west on the Orange Plank Road, Confederate troops commanded by Brig. Gen. Cadmus Wilcox deployed north-to-south across it. Scrub woods concealed the Confederates, whose positions encompassed the two-story, red-brick Salem Church immediately to their front, a schoolhouse, and, to the east, a tollgate.

As additional regiments reached him, Wilcox deployed them right and left to protect his flanks.

Suddenly Yankees appeared along the ridge defended by Wilcox. “At a distance of three miles from Fredericksburg, “the enemy made a stand and opened fire from a Battery upon our advancing column,” Edwards wrote.

Col. Clark S. Edwards commanded the 5th Maine Infantry Regiment during the battles at Fredericksburg and Salem Church in early May 1863. He survived the carnage and wrote a detailed report of it to Maine Gov. Abner Coburn. (Maine State Archives)

“At 3:25 p.m., the two Confederate guns posted at the tollgate opened fire at a distance of 800 yards,” according to Historynet.com.

“A line of battle was immediately formed extending to the right and left of the road,” Edwards wrote. Bartlett deployed his brigade south of the Orange Plank Road; his men faced west toward Salem Church and the woods filled with hidden Confederates.

While advancing west from Fredericksburg on Sunday, May 3, 1863, the brigade to which the 5th Maine Infantry was attached encountered Confederate troops near Salem Church on the Orange Plank Road. Engaging the Confederates, the 5th Maine boys pushed them back while passing the church on the side with the windows. (Brian Swartz Photo)

Two Union artillery batteries opened fire on the Confederate guns; men from the 16th New York spread right and left to skirmish with their Confederate counterparts.

The 5th Maine Infantry’s “right flank rested upon the road and supported” the 121st New York Infantry Regiment, Edwards recalled. “The line advanced in this position” past the tollgate, “until near the woods, where the enemy were posted, when I moved obliquely to the left and formed on the left of the 96th Penn. Regt. in the edge of the woods.

“My Regiment was now on the extreme left of the line and without support,” Edwards noted.

Musketry erupted to the north, where “the right of the line had already become engaged,” he set the stage for Hodsdon. “The heavy and continuous volleys told us but too plainly that the enemy were in large force and that warm work was before us.”

Wilcox had filled Salem Church and the schoolhouse with Alabamian infantrymen, who fired from every available window. Union troops charged both buildings, from which the Alabamians erupted in flight.

Union infantrymen swept them up.

During the 150th anniversary re-enactment of the Battle of Antietam, Confederate troops march out at Antietam, Md. to engage Union troops on Saturday, Sept. 15, 2012. Similarly clad and equipped Confederate troops engaged Union forces — including the 5th Maine Infantry — at Salem Church near Fredericksburg on Sunday, May 3, 1863. (Brian Swartz Photo)

Engulfed in the battle din, the 5th Maine advanced past the church. “Soon, the shouts of the enemy immediately in our front, warned us that they were advancing, and every man stood ready to receive them, feeling that on him alone depended the issue of the battle,” Edwards remembered.

Pushing some 500 feet through scrub woods described by one soldier as a “thicket,” Bartlett’s men emerged about 20 yards from a Confederate-occupied road beyond Salem Church. Both sides exchanged volleys; Bartlett lost men here, and so did Wilcox.

These bullet holes that pockmark the east wall of Salem Church were probably caused by Union rifle fire, perhaps even by men from the 5th Maine Infantry. (Brian Swartz Photo)

Sheltered in rifle pits dug west of this country road, other Confederates opened fire on the Union troops. Led by Col. Emory Upton, an up-and-coming officer, the 121st New York Infantry charged the 10th Alabama Infantry. In a swirling fight that quickly drew in the 9th Alabama Infantry and two Georgia regiments, the 121st New York took heavy casualties —
— and as Upton withdrew his men, enemy soldiers charged.

“The shock came at last, and in almost an instant the regt. on my right was overpowered by numbers, and obliged to give way,” Edwards described the disaster now threatening the 5th Maine. Within minutes — perhaps only 20-30 seconds, even “before the situation could be comprehended,” he recalled — “the enemy was swarming on both flanks” of the 5th Maine “and pouring a murderous fire into our ranks from right to left.”

Formed into line, the 5th Maine boys “returned” the Confederate volleys “with good effect.” Here the Maine boys pitched forward, spun like tops and collapsed, or sprawled backgrounds as lead bullets punched into flesh and bone.

Here Edwards and his rapidly shrinking regiment “fought with desperate bravery,” he praised “all my officers and men.” Here the 5th Maine Infantry Regiment might have been swept away as would be the 16th Maine Infantry only two months hence, but “at this critical moment I received orders to fall back, and giving a rather heavy volley, retired slowly and in good order,” Edwards wrote.

The same regiment that had skedaddled at First Manassas withdrew slowly at Salem Church. The Maine boys were “obliged to retreat a long distance across an open field without cover,” Edwards remembered that horrible retreat.

“Here, many of my men fell,” he succinctly informed Hodsdon.

“On reaching the first cover [of scrub trees] I rallied my command, and retired in good order, the enemy having been repulsed by the [artillery] batteries,” Edwards recalled. Those batteries blasted approaching Confederates with shot, shell, and canister.

The granite soldier atop the 23rd New Jersey Infantry monument overlooks the heavy traffic on Route 3 (Orange Plank Road) at Salem Church west of Fredericksburg. On Sunday, May 3, 1863, the 5th Maine Infantry Regiment advanced toward the church from the far horizon, then withdrew in the same direction as today’s east-bound traffic after suffering heavy casualties during the Battle of Salem Church. (Brian Swartz Photo)

Edwards recounted the butcher’s bill to Hodsdon; besides the 18 men lost on Sunday morning, the 5th Maine “lost in killed[,] wounded and sniping, six officers and sixty-nine men” at the Battle of Salem Church. About 300 men had marched into battle with the 5th Maine that morning; now a third of them were simply gone.

Company G had lost 2nd Lt. Cyrus Brann and Privates James Miller and Lemuel Shaw killed and Privates Frank Dealing and Henry Soule wounded. Privates Thomas Adams and M.C. Walker were missing.

The Confederates had particularly hammered Company K, which counted Sgt. Horatio Bumpus and Privates Edwin Hackett and Donald McDonald wounded, plus four corporals and four privates missing.

The casualty list ran almost three pages in length. Wounded at Salem Church, 1st Lt. William Stevens of Co. B and 2nd Lt. Frank Patterson of Co. D were now missing. Company F had lost Privates John Norris and Peter Reaver killed, three corporals and nine privates wounded, and one private missing.

Besides the two officers listed as missing in action, Edwards wrote the names of 28 noncoms and privates who had also vanished at Salem Church. At least a few undoubtedly lay dead or wounded on the battlefield Sunday night.

Behind Sedgwick, other Confederates reoccupied their positions along the Fredericksburg heights. By nightfall, Sedgwick realized that not only was he trapped between strengthening enemy forces; he knew that Joe Hooker could spare him no relief.

The 5th Maine would participate in Hooker’s ignominious withdrawal from Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg. Shoved into a narrow perimeter around Scott’s Ford on the Rappahannock River, the Sixth Corps repulsed Confederate attacks on Monday, May 4.

That night, the 5th Maine “was thrown out as skirmishers to cover the crossing of the Corps” on hastily erected pontoon bridges, Edwards remembered. The regiment “was one of the last two to cross the river.”

The blood-letting had finally ended.

1st Lt. George Waters Bicknell was the adjutant of the 5th Maine Infantry Regiment during the May 1863 Battle of Fredericksburg. In a detailed regimental history that he wrote after the war, he described the regiment’s bloody battles at Fredericksburg and Salem Church. (Photo courtesy of Fifth Maine Museum)

After enjoying the “beautiful night” that slipped away with the dawn on May 3, 1863, 1st Lt. George Bicknell saw that Sunday turn decidedly ugly.

Sheltered by the Virginia darkness, he stood with his 5th Maine Infantry comrades as they waited the orders to attack nearby Confederate troops defending the heights southeast of Fredericksburg. As Gen. Joseph Hooker sent his Army of the Potomac across the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers well upstream to outflank Gen. Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia, Union troops threatened to attack the city.

Five days earlier, the 5th Maine boys had been minding their business elsewhere. Now they faced death.

After “my regiment broke camp near White Oak Church” during the afternoon on Tuesday, April 28, the Maine boys marched several miles and bivouacked “near the point selected for crossing the Rappahannock, a short distance below Fredericksburg,” Col. Clark S. Edwards wrote Maine Adjutant General John Hodsdon on Saturday, May 9.

Orders then came for the 5th Maine boys to participate in Wednesday’s amphibious assault. They and other troops would board pontoon boats, paddle across the Rappahannock, “and capture and hold the opposite bank … while the pontoon bridges were being laid,” Edwards wrote.

During the mid-December 1862 Battle of Fredericksburg, Union infantrymen cross the Rappahannock River in pontoon boats (left) and go ashore to find and kill the Confederate sharpshooters shooting Federal combat engineers extending a pontoon bridge across the river (right). On Wednesday, April 29, 1863, the 5th Maine Infantry Regiment crossed the Rappahannock in similar boats, landed at Fredericksburg, and chased away Confederate pickets. (Library of Congress)

“My regiment was among the first to cross,” he recalled. Perhaps an hour before dawn, “the boats were loaded with troops and pushed boldly out into the stream.”

Nature sheltered the 5th Maine boys that Wednesday. “So heavily did the fog lie around us, that one could see only a very short distance in advance,” recalled Bicknell, the regimental adjutant.

“If fog was to be of any protection, we certainly had plenty of that kind of protection upon that morning,” he remembered.

Awaiting their turn to board the pontoon boats — actually the floating “piers” for pontoon bridges — Bicknell and his comrades listened. “From the sounds which reached us, we knew some portion of our troops were upon the move,” he noted.

As the cumbersome pontoon boats of the first assault wave slowly approached the Fredericksburg shore, “a volley of musketry was discharged from the rifle pits of the enemy,” Edwards wrote.

Confederate infantry evidently fired high, though their volley killed or wounded several soldiers in the boats. On the opposite shore, “a full chorus of bullets from the other side” came “whistling their infernal songs” and “skipped over our heads,” Bicknell described that initial volley. The Maine boys dropped to the ground, and horses bolted, often towing cannons, caissons, and wagons far from the action.

“Soon our time came to move,” Bicknell wrote. Approaching the pontoon boats that were spread out “to receive an entire brigade,” the 5th Maine boys packed 60 to 70 men per boat. Then “we pushed off.”

Union troops had already “gained a foothold,” formed into line, “charged up the opposite banks, and reached the enemy’s picket line,” Bicknell remembered. Confederate troops fired another “full volley” at the approaching boats. Bicknell reported two men killed and nine wounded, but he may have counted total casualties among all troops in the second wave; Edwards claimed the 5th Maine escaped unscathed.

As their boats brushed the far bank, the Maine boys leaped ashore, Edwards remembered. His men joined other regiments in forming a line; they then “gallantly charged up the bank, and into the rifle pits[,] scattering the enemy in all directions.”

Enemy skirmishers “fell back rapidly,” and Union skirmishers spread across “the wide plain in front of our position,” Edwards reported.

Leaning over a rail fence, a Union officer studies Confederate pickets killed at Fredericksburg, Va. after Union troops crossed the Rappahannock River in late April 1863 to attack the town. (Library of Congress)

The Virginia sun burned away the fog by 10 a.m. Bicknell stood amazed that “there in plain view lay the Union army,” yet the Confederates on the heights did not open fire. Union combat engineers finished building the pontoon bridges by noon; horse-drawn artillery batteries rattled and thumped across the bridges to deploy amidst the infantry.

On Thursday, April 30, the 5th Maine “performed picket duty on the extreme advance,” Bicknell said. “The picket lines … were so near together, that conversation between the two could be easily carried on.

“Some trading of coffee for tobacco was indulged in, coffee being as great a luxury to the Reb, as good tobacco was to the Yank,” Bicknell recalled.

“A heavy fog coldly enveloped us in complete gloom” as the 5th Maine boys “paced on the designated beats” that night, he said. The 6th Maine Infantry relieved the 5th Maine on the picket line late on Friday morning, and shooting soon broke out all along the opposing lines.

Between lulls in the nearby musketry, “upon our right … we heard the sound of severe fighting, and we learned that evening that” Hooker had attacked Lee’s troops at Chancellorsville, Bicknell reported.

Union troops maneuvered downstream from Fredericksburg to keep Confederate forces pinned to their fortifications. Lee desperately needed additional troops to face Hooker miles to the west; if the Federal divisions outside Fredericksburg actually attacked the town, he could not spare the men in the defenses there.

Saturday dawned “beautiful and quiet for us,” according to Bicknell. Some fighting took place below the Fredericksburg heights later that day.

According to Edwards, Union troops remained in position until 1 a.m., Sunday, May 3, “when the troops were ordered under arms” and maneuvered into “a line of battle” on “the centre of the plain.”

“It was a beautiful night, almost too lovely in which to engage in blood and carnage,” Bicknell recalled.

The order to advance came at dawn; the 5th Maine crossed the plain “and occupied a position at the point where the Bowling Green Turnpike intersects a wide ravine,” Edwards reported. To the northwest, the 6th Maine and other regiments attacked Marye’s Heights, scene of horrible carnage in mid-December 1862.

Bicknell, Edwards, and the 5th Maine struck downriver. About 7 a.m., Edwards received orders to “move down the turnpike to the left of the ravine” to support an artillery battery noisily hammering away at Confederate artillery on the heights. “Amidst a storm of shell from the enemy’s batteries,” the 5th Maine redeployed “without loss” and formed a line “about one hundred yards from the road facing the ravine,” Edwards wrote.

New orders sent the regiment “up the ravine” to “occupy the railroad,” Edwards recalled. As his men advanced, Confederate artillery opened “a rapid fire …with Shrapnel or Grape and Cannister” (sic) from “a range of two hundred yards, thinning our ranks at every discharge.”

As he penned his report to Hodsdon, Edwards probably paused to think about the men lost at this point. Bicknell described advancing “perhaps an eighth of a mile, under a terrible fire”; in just “over two minutes … we lost in killed and wounded, in a place not twenty feet square, eighteen of our number,” he reported.

Despite their losses and “scarcely heeding” the accurate cannon fire, “my men pushed boldly forward, up the ravine through a thick undergrowth, and over broken ground.” Edwards reported.

“The ranks seemed mowed down” throughout the advancing First Brigade commanded by Brig. Gen. Joseph Bartlett, Edwards said. He watched as Bartlett, “sitting on his horse near by amidst bursting shells … could only exclaim, as he saw these men rushing into the very jaws of death … ‘Noble men, noble men.’”

The 5th Maine finally anchored its right flank on the left flank of the 98th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment. Suddenly a solid cannonball bounded down the ravine and struck the knapsack slung over a Maine soldier’s shoulder.

The cannonball ripped away the knapsack and scattered “its contents,” including “his rations of pork and hard bread, on every hand, and the force of the blow rolling the soldier over two or three times,” Bicknell watched awestruck.

“Picking himself up,” the soldier grinned and said, “‘Golly, boys, five days’ rations gone to thunder,’” Bicknell recalled.

His comrades roared with laughter.

Just minutes later Bicknell “was severely wounded in the head by a piece of a shell,” he later added to his tale. The wound kept him out of combat for three months.

Now in view of the railroad embankment, Bartlett realized that the position was too strongly held to warrant a bloody assault. He ordered his regimental commanders to deploy skirmishers; Edwards sent “my left companies,” with “the best marksmen employed as sharpshooters to pick off the enemy’s gunners.

“A sharp fire was kept up for nearly an hour,” Edwards recalled. Then Bartlett received orders to withdraw.

“The regiment retired in good order, bringing off the killed and wounded” and “occupying the old position,” Edwards wrote. Word reached him about noon that the assault on Marye’s Heights had been successful; with Union troopers now advancing beyond their left flank, the Confederates on the heights soon retreated.

Edwards reported “three officers and eighteen men … killed and wounded” during the Sunday attack. He identified the men by rank, name, and condition; only four privates had died, but the 14 wounded men would later be grateful they had earned the “Red Badge of Courage” on this Sunday.

The length of the 5th Maine’s future casualty list would be almost incomprehensible by Monday.

The Bangor Museum and History Center will unveil its 2013 Civil War exhibit, titled “Bullets and Bandages: The Passions and Price of the Civil War,” on Saturday, May 4. The exhibit will be open through Oct. 12.

The cost of war becomes evident at 10 a.m., Saturday, May 4, as the Bangor Museum and History Center opens a new exhibit titled “Bullets and Bandages: The Passions and Price of the Civil War.” Located in the Thomas A. Hill House at 159 Union St., Bangor, the exhibit will be open 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Tuesday-Saturday, until Oct. 12.

In the early months of the Civil War, patriotic fervor led men to enlist for an expectedly short conflict. Without realizing the toll that combat and disease would exact, friends and relatives cheered their heroes off to the battlefield, but many Maine men never returned.

Spread across four rooms inside the museum, “Bullets and Bandages” leads with visitors passing through a wealthy family’s parlor. In such rooms in Bangor and elsewhere in Maine, husbands, brothers, and sons announced their intentions to enlist in the regiments coalescing across the state. Women sobbed at such decisions, then sewed clothing and flags for their fledgling warriors.

By mid-war, the Confederacy and the United States both initiated national conscription to provide more men for their battle-thinned armies. At the “Bullets and Bandages” transition point between the home hearth and the military camp, an actual draft box made and used during the Civil War to draw names for conscripted men from Maine’s 4th District will be displayed.

War then shatters domestic tranquility as visitors emerge into the room devoted to battlefield medical care. During the Civil War, many more soldiers died from disease than from hostile fire. For those soldiers wounded on the battlefield, “medical care at the beginning of the war was in the Dark Ages,” said Curator Dana Lippitt.

A new exhibit at the Bangor Museum and History Center will display this Civil War surgeon’s kit on loan from Detective Richard Harburger of the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Department. Titled “Bullets and Bandages: The Passions and Price of the Civil War,” the outstanding exhibit will open on Saturday, May 4 and will be open to the public from 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Tuesday-Saturday, until Oct. 12. (Brian Swartz Photo)

Among the artifacts displayed in this room are a surgical kit on loan from Detective Richard Harburger of the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Department. Well maintained, the various instruments gleam in the light — and the accompanying information reveals how each instrument was used by surgeons treating battle wounds.

Nearby is a pannier containing the apothecary carried to war by Dr. Augustus C. Howe, a surgeon with the 2nd Maine Infantry Regiment. “We think he had this at Andersonville [Prison in Georgia] after the war,” Lippitt said.

A cupping set contains a scarifier and other devices used to draw blood and excess “humors” from ill soldiers. Believing they were benefitting their sick patients, doctors bled them, a practice that actually weakened and helped kill many men who might otherwise have survived their diseases or wounds.

“Bleed, blister, and purge was a waning theory of medicine,” Lippitt said while discussing the cupping set.

In the exhibit’s third room, visitors learn about the firearms, bullets, bayonets, and artillery shells that inflicted so much mayhem on Maine men. Displayed in lighted cases are 12 rifles, two carbines, and three revolvers.

“We know most of them were said to be used in the war,” Lippitt said. She briefly held an actual Confederate carbine, a British-made Enfield carried to war by Raleigh White Hobson of Co. C, 5th Virginia Cavalry. He etched his name and outfit on the heavy carbine’s stock; the weapon came north after a soldier from the 1st Maine Heavy Artillery found it after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Court House.

The exhibit’s fourth room returns visitors “home” with the Maine soldiers who survived the war. In this part of the exhibit, visitors will learn how maimed soldiers adapted to civilian life; the display includes a wooden artificial leg belonging to a Bangor soldier who came home and lived many years after his wounding.

Placed strategically throughout the exhibit are the photos of many soldiers — and their own words. “We are going to use a lot of quotes from soldiers’ letters,” Lippitt explained. “No better way exists to tell their stories than to listen to what they had to say.”

“Bullets and Bandages” follows the highly successful “Women in War” exhibit that the museum opened last May and closed this spring. Stressing the different roles that women played during the Civil War — especially in Bangor — the exhibit boosted museum visitation.

“We increased our attendance by over 299 percent with our exhibit last year over previous years,” said Jennifer Pictou, the museum’s executive director. “We were very pleased to have so many more visitors.”

Among them were more students; “school participation was up by 57 percent,” she said.
“We charge schools $3 per student. We create a customized program for them based on their curriculum at the time they visit us,” Pictou said.

“Bullets and Bandages” is sponsored by Bangor Savings Bank. Admission is $7 per adult, $5 per senior citizen age 65 and older, $3 per child ages 6-17, and free for children age 5 and younger.

For more information about the exhibit, log onto www.bangormuseum.org.

in early 1863, Maine Gov. Abner Coburn approved the appointment of Dr. Francis G. Warren as surgeon of the 5th Maine Infantry Regiment. Warren had served for some time as the regiment’s assistant surgeon. (Photo courtesy of Biddeford Historical Society)

When the 5th Maine Infantry Regiment sought a doctor in the house in 1863, officers discovered that a medical student just would not do.

The 1,000-odd men and boys who had marched to war with the 5th Maine two years earlier had encountered germs, diseases, Confederate bullets, and viruses galore. Carried on the muster rolls as “surgeons” and “assistant surgeons,” the regimental doctors had poked and prodded myriad patients, many of whom had died or gone home unfit for military service — or much of anything else.

Competent doctors could be hard to find, but when a double vacancy occurred in the 5th Maine in midwinter 1863, two qualified volunteers applied.

Writing from “Headquarters 1st Brigade … near White Oak Ch.[urch] Va.” on Tuesday, Feb. 10, Dr. L.W. Oakley informed Maine Gov. Abner Coburn that “I have been intimately acquainted with Dr. F[rancis]. G. Warren,” the 5th Maine’s assistant surgeon, “for some months.” The doctors had worked in the same hospital after the Battle of Antietam; Oakley described Warren as “eminently fitted for the position of regimental surgeon.”

Oakley’s recommendation came a month late. On Friday, Feb. 13, regimental adjutant George W. Bicknell reported that the appointments of Warren to surgeon and Dr. William S. Noyes to assistant surgeon “were duly received” at regimental headquarters. The appointments were dated Jan. 7.

But a slight problem arose. Writing to Maine Adjutant General John Hodsdon on Tuesday, March 31, Noyes announced, “I found after accepting the commission” as the regiment’s assistant surgeon a month earlier “that I could not obtain a leave of absence for the purpose of finishing my studies and taking the requisite degree.”

He was still a medical student.

Because he could not “qualify myself for the proper discharge of the responsible duties” of “an assistant surgeon,” Noyes told Hodsdon that “I have resigned.” Back to square one went the search for a qualified 5th Maine assistant surgeon.

Make that two. Looking around the medical tent, Warren counted the number of doctors “present and accounted for” at one: himself. He hurriedly told Coburn on Friday, April 1 that “as we are soon to engage in an active campaign it is very desirable that the vacancies in this department be filled as early as practicable.”

Warren had someone in mind. “Doctor Melville H. Manson of Lymington [sic]has been suggested to me as a candidate for one of these [assistant surgeon] vacancies, and I would respectfully submit him to the position, knowing him to be in every way qualified for it,” Warren told Coburn on April 1.

“I have been acquainted with him for some length of time and feel assured that he would fill such a position with great credit to himself and the Regiment,” Warren concluded.

Wounded Union soldiers lay beneath the overspreading limbs of a tall tree on Saturday, May 2, 1863. Wounded near Fredericksburg during the Chancellorsville campaign, these men received the best medical care available in the field. Pain etched on his weary face, the bearded soldier sitting at left has lost his right hand; bandages cover the stump of his arm. The young soldier laying on the stretcher has lost his right foot to an amputation. By the time that he was appointed surgeon of the 5th Maine Infantry Regiment in winter 1863, Dr. Francis Warren had performed his share of amputations. (Library of Congress Photo)

The 5th Maine’s commanding officer, Col. Clark S. Edwards, leaped at the opportunity to snag the good doctor Manson. Writing to Hodsdon on April 6, Edwards claimed that the nominations of Manson and another doctor as assistant surgeons “are made at the request of the Surgeon in Chief of the [1st] Division to which we are attached.”

The division surgeon “says that it is necessary to have both vacancies filled,” Edwards wrote.

He was correct; the Battle of Chancellorsville lay a month away, and the 5th Maine would need every doctor available.

Warren wrote Manson and asked him to became an assistant surgeon. “I would like the position and would go cheerfully with your assent,” Manson assured Coburn from Brunswick on Friday, April 8. Manson hoped “to give aid and relief in some degree to those who may be unfortunate in losing health and in receiving wounds while fighting to maintain their country’s rights and honor.”

Manson stressed to Coburn that “I have not received my diploma yet, but this is my third course of medical instruction and should you see fit to appoint me to that position, I can have a premature examination and take my degree.”

Writing from Bowdoin College on April 10, Dr. Israel T. Dana, M.D. stated that Manson, “now a member of the Medical Class of this institution,” was “expecting to graduate in medicine at the close of the present term.”

Dana recommended with “great pleasure” that Manson be appointed an assistant surgeon with the 5th Maine Infantry; “he would be found truly useful, competent & worthy in that position,” Dana wrote.

Then Warren informed Coburn on Wednesday, April 13 that “under late orders from the War Department … only one Asst. Surgeon will be allowed for each Regiment.” If the 5th Maine Infantry could have only assistant surgeon, “I would earnestly recommend Doctor Manson for the position,” Warren lobbied for his candidate.

Coburn acted quickly.

“Dear sir,” Melville H. Manson wrote him on Friday, April 20. “I see by the Lewiston Journal that you have appointed me assistant surgeon of Maine 5th Reg.”

Manson had received no official letter announcing his appointment; instead, he had read about it in a newspaper that a friend had likely forwarded from Lewiston.

Still a medical student, the determined Manson asked Coburn “about what time you would have me join the regiment as I wish to take my degree before going.” The Bowdoin “medical faculty must be called together, which will require a short notice” of “two or three weeks if possible,” Manson explained.

A medical student just would not do as the 5th Maine Infantry headed to war that spring.
But Dr. Melville H. Manson, M.D., would suffice.

He passed his medical exam and went to war.

After a Union division commanded by Brig. Gen. Cuvier Grover landed west of Miller Point on Grand Lake in Louisiana on Monday, April 13, 1863, a small Confederate flotilla sailed across the lake to attack the assembled Federal fleet. The largest warship in the flotilla was the CSS Queen of the West, a captured Union vessel. This watercolor of the Queen was painted in 1854.

A war of words erupted in a Bangor newspaper in spring 1863 after an Army chaplain allegedly insulted the 26th Maine Infantry Regiment.
For the use of one word in a letter written to the Daily Whig & Courier, the Rev. John K. Lincoln earned righteous indignation from a Castine resident.
A Bangor Theological Seminary graduate, Lincoln served as chaplain to the fledgling 22nd Maine Infantry Regiment. Not needed in Virginia after mustering into service in October 1862, the regiment soon shipped to Louisiana.
There the 22nd Maine boys — along with comrades in the 12th Maine and 26th Maine — chased a Confederate army led by Maj. Gen. Richard Taylor. Union troops traipsed across south Louisiana and finally trapped their quarry at Franklin — or so believed their commander, Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks.
Assigned to a division commanded by Brig. Gen. Cuvier Grover, the three Maine regiments went ashore on Grand Lake near Franklin on Monday, April 13. The Union troops soon reached Franklin, where Chaplain Lincoln picked up the story in a letter written on April 22 to the Daily Whig & Courier.
The paper published his lengthy treatise on Friday, May 8.
The 22nd Maine belonged to the First Brigade. After landing near Franklin, the brigade pushed south toward the town as other Union troops slowly disembarked from their transports. Confederate soldiers lightly contested the advance; “here for the first time we heard the ‘whistling of bullets’ and the ‘screeching of shells’” fired from two Confederate cannons, according to Lincoln.
He described the gunfire as “music with which we became quite familiar the rest of the day.”
With his division finally ashore, Grover pushed his men south to Bayou Teche, where they seized a bridge before Confederates could burn it. Most regiments crossed the bridge and camped that night on the Teche’s west bank.
The next morning, Grover planned to follow a road downstream along Bayou Teche and occupy Franklin. Doing so would hopefully trap Taylor’s army between that town and Fort Bisland to the southeast; there Taylor had skillfully held off two divisions led by Banks on Monday afternoon.
Aware that Grover had landed behind him, Taylor bandoned Fort Bisland Monday night and pushed his men northwest to confront Grover.

On Tuesday, April 14, 1863, the CSS Queen of the West attacked a Union fleet off Miller’s Point on Grand Lake in Louisiana. Three Federal warships (from left the USS Estrella, the USS Arizona, and the USS Calhoun) attacked and set fire to the Queen (center), which sank.

Tuesday “was the memorable day … ushered in by a gunboat fight” on Grand Lake, Lincoln said. Two months earlier, Confederate troops had captured the USS Queen of the West on the Red River; now “the [CSS] Queen of the West and a transport loaded with troops came down” Grand Lake “to attack our rear,” he reported.
The USS Arizona, USS Calhoun, and USS Estrella attacked the Confederate ships, and “a well-directed shell from the Estrella (commanded by Captain Tinker of Ellsworth, Me.), entered a small magazine on the [Queen’s] gun-deck, and blew off her upper works and set on fire,” Lincoln wrote.
Meanwhile, Grover’s Third Brigade led the advance toward Franklin. Perhaps a mile north of the town, the brigade faced south while starting started across “an open corn and cane field,” according to Lincoln. He described the brigade’s disposition as “the 13th Connecticut on the left side of the road, between it and the bayou; the 26th Maine on the right hand side, on the right of which was the 159th New York,” then an artillery battery. “On the extreme right was the 25th Connecticut.”
Spread out behind the Third Brigade was the First Brigade, to which belonged the 1st Louisiana, the 22nd Maine, and three New York regiments: the 6th, 91st, and 131st.
Commanded by Taylor, Confederate troops waited in Nerson’s Woods just beyond the cane field left muddy by recent rains. Coordinating his actions with the CSS Diana, a gunboat now trapped on Bayou Teche, Taylor ordered his men to attack. The CSS Diana shelled the Union troops.
Screaming the Rebel yell, Louisiana and Texas infantry struck the Third Brigade. The 159th New York boys fought bravely, but briefly, before breaking. Other regiments — including the 26th Maine — hastily pulled back.
“Not until our right [flank] was turned by a charge of the Texans on the 25th Connecticut, was the 1st Brigade ordered into the field,” Linoln wrote afterwards. “The 91st New York, supported by the 22nd Maine, drove back the Texans with a single volley.”
Across the road the 13th Connecticut captured “two pieces of artillery and a beautiful silk flag which was presented to them by the ladies of Franklin,” Lincoln noted. Confederate troops swiftly withdrew; with CSS Diana shells whizzing overhead, Grover delayed his advance for a while.
Taylor and his men got away. Crewmen aboard the CSS Diana burned their gunboat and fled.

William Hall of Dexter, a soldier in the 22nd Maine Infantry Regiment, drew this lithograph of the April 14, 1863 Battle of Irish Bend. Fought near Franklin, La., the battle involved the 22nd Maine Infantry and the 26th Maine Infantry. (Harper’s Weekly)

After Union naval forces captured New Orleans in spring 1862, Federal troops staged from the city to attack different Confederate posts in Louisiana. Assigned to an expedition that crisscrossed southern Louisiana in March and April 1863, Sgt. Lagrange Severance of the 12th Maine Infantry Regiment had probably spent much time in New Orleans. (Harper’s Weekly)

Lagrange Severance showed promise as a fledgling travel agent … despite the faded blue uniform that he donned daily.

When Col. George Shepley led the 12th Maine Infantry to war in November 1861, the delightfully named Lagrange marched along as a private in Co. H. Described by a Bangor newspaper as “a very intelligent young man,” Severance toured the Deep South via pestilential Ship Island in Mississippi, New Orleans, and other places familiar and foreign up and down the Mississippi River.

In time he rose in rank to sergeant and later to second lieutenant.

When Union Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks launched an expedition against Confederate-held Port Hudson in spring 1863, the talented Severance crisscrossed south Louisiana with the 12th Maine — and he described his travels in a letter written from Opelousas on Saturday, April 25.

In a campaign coordinated with Admiral David Farragut and his naval squadron, Banks and components of his 19th Corps departed Baton Rouge on Friday, March 13. Union troops marched north toward Port Hudson, which lay 25 miles upriver; there, in stout fortifications dug atop the town’s high bluffs, Confederate cannons dominated traffic on the river.

Plans called for Banks’ men to attack Port Hudson’s landward defenses while Farragut’s warships steamed beneath the bluffs and passed safely beyond the river defenses. The joint attack would begin about dawn on Sunday, March 15.

Based on a message sent from Banks on Saturday, Farragut launched the naval assault that night. Darkness, gun smoke, accurate Confederate artillery fire, and missed signals saw only two warships — Farragut’s flagship, the USS Hartford, and the USS Albatross — steam past the Port Hudson defenses. Most ships suffered damage; the USS Mississippi grounded on an uncharted sand bar, and Capt. Melancton Smith finally ordered his men to abandon their ship after setting it ablaze. The Mississippi’s 24 tons of gunpowder provided a brilliant explosion later that night.

Withdrawing his men to Baton Rouge, Banks filed reports and looked around for other opportunities for military glory. He decided to deal with the perceived threat presented by Confederate Maj. Gen. Richard Taylor and his troops in the bayous and swamps west of New Orleans.

Severance apparently never believed that Banks had intended a serious assault on Port Hudson. “The whole expedition has been conducted well,” with “the enemy … [being] totally ignorant of our intentions one week before the blow was struck,” he described what he viewed as Banks’ sleight of hand.

“When I started for Port Hudson, something over five weeks ago today, I expected that we were going to do something there … but there was a possibility of failure and that possibility prevented the attack,” he wrote.

But Severance finally figured that “now it appears that it was never intended to attack the place, but only to call off their (Confederate) attention while the navy passed by” the cliff-mounted cannons at Port Hudson. He likely questioned the ineffectual infantry probes against the Port Hudson defenses;

“As a large part of the [Confederate] troops west of the Mississippi had been called to the defence of the Mississippi, that part of the Confederacy was rather unprotected,” Severance explained.

After the Navy’s failure to sail an entire squadron pass Port Hudson, “we went back to Baton Rouge,” he continued his travelogue.

“What the next move was to be no one seemed to know,” he pondered.

Suddenly “regiments and sometimes brigades would disappear in the night, and when it came our turn to go we started one night at six o’clock and found ourselves next morning at Donaldsonville,” on the west bank of the Mississippi “about fifty miles below (downriver from) Baton Rouge,” Sgt. Lagrange Severance wrote from Opelousas.

Col. George Shepley led the 12th Maine Infantry in the sleight-of-hand expedition commanded by Nathaniel Banks in spring 1863. Banks lunged north as if heading to Port Hudson, La.; he then wheeled his divisions south and west to destroy the smaller Confederate army commanded by the highly capable Richard Taylor. (Maine State Archives Photo)

Here the 12th Maine caught up with “the truant brigades” and the division commanded by Brig. Gen. Cuvier Grover. Then “three days’ long march brought us to Thibedauville (Thibodaux), about forty miles from the Mississippi, on Bayou LaFouche,” Severance reported.

Cuvier’s men entrained on the New Orleans & Opelousas (sic) Railroad for an 18-mile journey “to Bayou Roueff, where we remained two or three days,” he described the journey.

Turning west into southern Louisiana, Banks sought to trap Taylor’s army with a two-pronged attack. Boarding steamboats at Brashear City (now called Morgan City) on Thursday, April 9, two Union divisions crossed Berwick Bay and landed at Berwick. From there Banks slowly advanced on Franklin while Cuvier’s division sailed up the Atchafalaya River to land beyond Franklin.

If the two expeditions moved quickly, Union forces could trap and destroy Taylor’s army.
During the morning on Saturday, April 11, the men from the 12th Maine and 41st Massachusetts Infantry boarded the transport Arizona. Along with other troop-laden streamers, “we started up the [Berwick] Bay, and from that into Lake Chestimacha, up which Lake we went about thirty miles,” Severance recalled.

He explained to his letter’s recipients that “Franklin, where the headquarters and principal part of Confederate troops were stationed,” lay “on Bayou Teche, about 25 miles [from] where it empties into Berwick’s Bay.

Banks intended that the two Union divisions put ashore at Berwick would keep the Confederates busy “while we were to go around and take them in the rear,” Severance wrote.

Unfortunately “the Arizona … grounded in passing the lake,” and the Maine and Massachusetts boys could only watch from the steamer’s rails as “the remainder of the fleet went on without her,” he commented. But “after considerable effort the vessel was got off Monday morning.”

The Arizona caught up with the other steamers that afternoon; by then “all the troops had been disembarked and gone off,” Severance wrote. The 12th Maine and 41st Massachusetts went ashore “and that night laid on our arms on the west side of the Teche.”

Banks believed Taylor to be trapped between Grover’s division and the Union divisions that had attacked Confederate-held Fort Bisland downriver from Franklin on Monday. Refusing to sacrifice his men, Taylor abandoned the fort that night and withdrew to Franklin.

With Grover blocking Taylor’s expected escape route, “it seemed we had them between the two [Union] armies,” Severance believed, “but it proved they found a way of crawling out.”

He described to his readers how “the bayou makes quite a turn (known as Irish Bend) towards the east at the place where we were, and a road runs across from one town to the other.” Federal troops failed to cut that road, across which “during the night, the enemy employed himself … in moving his baggage, and by [Tuesday] morning it was nearly all across.”

Sgt. Lagrange Severance and his comrades from the 12th Maine Infantry Regiment ventured deep into the bayous and swamps of south Louisiana while pursuing Confederate Gen. Richard Taylor and his army in April 1863. The Maine boys found the wilds of Louisiana a whole different world than the pine barrens and spruce-fir forests of home. (Harper’s Weekly)

According to Severance, Grover ordered an advance that “had not gone far before [meeting] the enemy in the edge of a thick wood” called Nerson’s Woods. “Regiments and batteries were brought into line of battle as soon as they came up and attacked the enemy.

“The fight was short but severe,” Severance described the Battle of Irish Bend. “The enemy was in a concealed position and [had] an excellent chance to rake us, but our men fought so desperately and advanced so rapidly that what they did they had to do quick.

“Before our regiment came up the woods were cleared, so we bore off none of the honors or enemies’ bullets except what we picked upon the battle field,” he wrote.

Enduring extensive shelling from a Confederate gunboat, Severance and his comrades resumed their Louisiana tour. They soon reached New Iberia after marching 16 miles; with “the rebel salt mines” not far away, Grover detached the 12th Maine and 41st Massachusetts to destroy them. The New Englanders headed out at 7 p.m. “and marched 11 miles [to the southwest] over the worst road I have seen for some time,” Severance wrote.

“But we were paid for our trouble on our arrival at the salt works next morning. It is the most splendid place I have seen in the whole South,” he wrote in a descriptive style worthy of a 21st-century travel agent.

“These salt works are situated on an Island, and on the north part of the land their (sic) is an elevation of about two hundred feet, affording one of the most splendid views I ever gazed upon,” Severance praised the scenery.

The Maine and Massachusetts boys destroyed the salt mines, then “started for New Iberia, where we arrived that night somewhat tired,” he wrote. From there the two regiments kept marching until the footsore soldiers reached Opelousas

And there the aspiring travel agent Lagrange Severance described in geographical detail how the Union forces had isolated Port Hudson and created alternate river routes along which “vessels can pass” without venturing beneath Confederate cannons.

“We have completely cut the Confederacy in twain, leaving Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana out in the cold,” he concluded. “Who says our cause looks bad?”

A colorful lithograph depicts the March 9, 1862, battle between the USS Monitor (left) and the CSS Virginia. Both warships were the first “ironclads” built by both sides in the Civil War and tested in combat. William Bryan, the great-great-great uncle of Holden resident Andy Bryan, served aboard the Monitor. (Art by Calvert Lithographing, Library of Congress)

HOLDEN — Although a 150-year mystery has stymied the American military’s top forensics experts, Andy Bryan thinks the answer is his great-great-great uncle, William Bryan.

Sixteen sailors died when the USS Monitor, the “cheesebox on a raft” that battled the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia, sank off Cape Hatteras, N.C., on New Year’s Eve 1862. Rescuers never recovered the bodies; only the names of the lost sailors survived until summer 2002.

Presumed drowned that dark and horribly stormy night was William Bryan, an emigrant Scottish sailor who volunteered for duty aboard the Monitor. Bryan and his older brother, James, arrived in the United States before the Civil War.

That conflict cost them dearly: William Bryan joined the Navy and vanished at sea, and James Bryan wore a Confederate uniform until killed in battle. He was Andy Bryan’s great-great grandfather.

Andy Bryan of Holden attended the March 8, 2013, burial of two sailors whose remains were recovered from the turret of the USS Monitor. His great-great-great uncle, Wlliam Bryan, was among the 16 sailors lost when the warship sank off Cape Hatteras during a late 1862 storm. Although DNA testing has not yet proved that William Bryan’s remains are among the two bodies recovered, Andy Bryan has enjoyed being involved with the identification project. (Brian Swartz Photo)

An educator, Bryan has worked the past 25 years at the Airline Community School in Aurora. Describing the Bryans as “an extensive family,” he has researched the family tree; as a youngster he heard tales about William and James and their Civil War experiences.
About four years ago, Andy Bryan “posted information on a genealogical forum” while seeking information about William’s parents.

That posting led to Andy receiving a request for his DNA. The Hawaii-based Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command needed help in identifying two skeletons discovered when a joint Navy-National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expedition raised the Monitor’s massive rotating turret in summer 2002. Divers discovered one skeleton inside the turret; the second skeleton was found after the turret was brought to the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Va.

Forensics experts sought to identify the unknown sailors, hence the DNA request to Andy Bryan and a cousin, James Bryan. They both supplied DNA samples that helped narrow the identity search to six of the Monitor’s 16 missing sailors.

Experts could not conclusively identify the unknown sailors, so the 150-year-old mystery remains just that — a mystery. But Andy Bryan believes that one sailor is William Bryan, and a recent DNA sample holds the key.

James “was a few years older than William” when the brothers Bryan emigrated to the United States, Andy said. William was born in 1833.

Pursuing a mercantile career “in the grain business,” James Bryan moved his family to different Southern cities before settling in Savannah, Andy said. There James joined the Savannah Volunteer Guards, a militia company; he later fought for the Confederacy and died during battle.

A wife and four children survived him. She later took her youngsters, including 3-year-old Benjamin, to Scotland; at age 18 he moved to Montreal “and became involved in the trade business there,” Andy Bryan said.

A successful businessman, Benjamin later joined the Wickyup Corp., an investment group that purchased six townships in eastern Hancock County. That acquisition brought the Bryans to Maine, where Andy Bryan was born in Waterville in the early 1960s. His family moved to Holden in 1967.

Lying about his age to enlist in the Royal Navy, William Bryan served aboard Her Majesty’s ships for nine years. An experienced sailor, he joined the United States Navy and initially served aboard the USS Ohio, a receiving ship stationed at Boston.

Crewmen of the USS Monitor lounge on the ironclad’s deck not long after the ironclad’s March 9, 1862, battle with the CSS Virginia. The crewman kneeling and facing the camera in the center has been identified as William Bryan; he died when the Monitor sank off Cape Hatteras on Dec. 31, 1862. Bryan was the great-great-great uncle of Andy Bryan of Holden. (Photographer James Gibson, Library of Congress)

Then he transferred to the USS Sabine, a frigate involved in early blockading operations along the Southern coast. In early 1862, Bryan transferred to the USS Monitor, then under construction at Greenpoint, N.Y. He served aboard the ironclad during the epic March 9 battle with the CSS Virginia and remained aboard until the Monitor sank off Cape Hatteras, N.C. after sunset on Dec. 31.

Ironically, William Bryan possibly never left the Monitor.

The skeletons recovered from the Monitor’s turret went to JPAC, where forensics experts attempted to identify the two sailors. Both men were white; one was approximately 17 to 24 years old, the other 30 to 40 years old. The younger sailor was slightly taller than his older comrade.

In time, forensics experts eliminated a few names from the list of missing Monitor crewmembers. Based on DNA testing, skeletal conditions, and genealogical research, researchers narrowed the possible identities to six sailors, of whom three seemed the strongest candidates: William Bryan and Robert Williams as the older sailor and Jacob Nicklis as the younger.

Scientific testing of the older man’s teeth indicated that he probably hailed from Wales; Williams did. The belief was based on evidence that the sailor grew up on a weed-based diet common to Scotland and Wales in the early to mid-19th century.

This fact supposedly eliminated William Bryan, who joined the Navy in New York City and assumedly came from there. When Andy Bryan heard about the dietary evidence, he immediately provided conclusive proof that William had grown up in Scotland.
Researchers were back to square one as to the older sailor’s identity.

In early January 2013, Andy learned about plans to bury the Monitor sailors during a ceremony to be held at Arlington National Cemetery on Friday, March 8. He and his 19-year-old daughter, Maggie, flew to Washington, D.C., on March 8. A Navy representative escorted them to their hotel, then to a noon luncheon.

Guests then attended a religious service at the Fort Myer Memorial Chapel. The Monitor sailors received full military honors; “it was very impressive,” Andy Bryan said. “They brought the caskets into the chapel,” where various officials including Navy Secretary Ray Mabus spoke.

The service encompassed all 16 missing Monitor sailors, not just the two actually present, Bryan stressed. “I was struck by how much it meant for them (modern sailors) to honor their former comrades,” he said. “It was just like they were honoring someone who had just died.”

Afterwards Navy personnel carried the flag-draped caskets outdoors to the waiting caissons, one drawn by six black horses and the other by six white horses. In Arlington National Cemetery, sailors bore the caskets to Grave 1145 in Section 46; a bugler played Taps, and a Navy honor guard delivered a 21-gun salute.

The Navy intends to erect on the gravesite a marker engraved with the names of all 16 Monitor sailors.

“What struck me was, my father was in the Coast Guard, and my uncle was in the Navy,” Andy Bryan said. “I felt a sense of honor to be there for my family.

Maggie Bryan “appreciated that we were able to be such an integral part of it,” he said.

During his genealogical research involving the Monitor, Bryan contacted many relatives whom he did not know; some attended the Monitor ceremony, and they shared family stories with him.

Although JPAC has not yet positively identified either Monitor sailor, William Bryan remains a viable contender. Researchers preferred using mitochondrial DNA to identify the sailors, but encountered difficulties in tracing female descendants of the 16 missing sailors.

Andy Bryan then learned that Mary Bryan, a sister of William Bryan, moved to Australia during the 19th century. He traced her female descendants and found 91-year-old Dorothy Humphrey Barker, Mary’s great-granddaughter. She recently provided a DNA sample to JPAC.

“We still may find out if William is one of the two sailors or not,” Bryan said. “It would give me a sense of satisfaction to know one way or another if he is buried at sea or at Arlington.”

Black soldiers assigned to Co. E, 4th United States Colored Troops, proudly form outside a barracks. As the Army created new black regiments, many Maine officers and non-commissioned officers sought promotion to the available officers’ slots. Federal law stipulated that only white officers could command black soldiers. (Library of Congress Photo)

To paraphrase the patriotic song “We Are Coming, Father Abraham,” by February 1863, the war-weary Maine veterans manning the nation’s ramparts from Virginia to Louisiana could “look across the hilltops that meet the southern sky,” where “long moving lines of rising dust your vision may descry.”

Those dust clouds were kicked up by the reinforcements coming to help the veterans of Cedar Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Murfreesboro — and these reinforcements meant business.

From the Louisiana bayous to the Sea Islands of the Southeastern coast to the Virginia Piedmont, former slaves were joining newly authorized black regiments. And these slaves-turned-warriors intended to give their former masters “the cold steel” of the Army’s standard-issue 17-inch bayonet.

Although black officers capably led the earliest regiments formed in Louisiana, the inbred attitude of white supremacy — prevalent among whites North and South— swiftly mandated that only white officers lead black regiments. So many such regiments would form that Maine men applied in droves for commissions in them.

“Lawson G. Ireland was 2nd Lieut. Of Co. E, 11th Maine Regt when I was in command of said regt,” Brig. Gen. John C. Caldwell wrote from “Headquarters Caldwell’s Brigade” at Falmouth, Va. on Monday, Feb. 23, 1863. The letter likely went to Maine Gov. Abner Coburn.

Born in Vermont, Caldwell had relocated to Maine in the mid-1850s. He served as the principal or “headmaster” at Washington Academy in East Machias, but the war called. Caldwell commanded the 11th Maine Infantry when that regiment mustered at Augusta in November 1861. Although a brigade commander by February 1863, he had not forgotten his men who demonstrated leadership qualities.

Ireland “was always prompt & faithful in the performance of his duties,” Caldwell wrote “and I take great pleasure in recommending him for the position of captain in one of the Regts of Blacks to be raised by the Government.”

Bangor grocer F.M. Sabine concurred in a March 12 addendum to Caldwell’s letter. “I have known Lieut Ireland ten or twelve years, and believing him to be a capable and patriotic man, I would earnestly recommend him for the position he desires,” Sabine wrote.

Caldwell also lobbied for another former comrade on Feb. 23. “Alphonso Patten was 1st Sergt of Co. K, 11th Maine Regt when I was in command of said Regt,” Caldwell penned a familiar passage. “He was prompt & efficient & of great courage & efficiency.

“I think him abundantly qualified for the position of Capt. in one of the Regts of Blacks to be raised by the Government,” Caldwell concluded.

Taking his cue from Caldwell, Patten wrote Coburn on Tuesday, March 3. “Being well acquainted with the infantry drill, as well as the Bayonet-exercise, having served in the capasity [sic] of Orderly Sergt. for nearly a year in the 11th ME.,” Patten described his military experience.

“I take the liberty of asking a commission either as Capt? or Lieut? in some one of the colored Regts,” he wrote. “Enclosed you will find a letter from Genl Caldwell, formaly [sic] Col. of the 11th.”

Sporting the legend “Better To Die Freemen, Than Live To Be Slaves,” the flag of the 3rd United States Colored Troops depicts the goddess Liberty handing an American flag to a smartly uniformed black sergeant. (Artist David Bustill Bowser, Library of Congress)

Writing to Coburn from St. Helena Island, S.C. on Tuesday, Feb. 24, Maine surgeon Nathan F. Blunt reported “that Maj. W[inslow]. P. Spofford of [the] 11th Regt. is desirous of getting the command of a Regt. of Blacks.

In Blunt’s “opinion, after an acquaintance [with Spofford] in camp and field, of several months, he is well qualified for the position which he seeks both as a man, and an officer,” Blunt wrote. “And while I should regret to lose his influence for good in this Regt, perhaps the good of the service would be better promoted by giving him full command of a new regiment as he wishes.”

Meanwhile, a 12th Maine Infantry officer had already evaluated fledgling black regiments, as “the following extract of a letter to Mr. Samuel Dickey (Dicker) of Orono from his son” revealed in the Monday, Dec. 15, 1862 Bangor Daily Whig and Courier.

Writing from Camp Parapet in Louisiana on Thursday, Nov. 13, 1862, Corp. John A. Dicker reported that “the [black] 1st Louisiana regiment is … now away on the expedition. Sergeant Hill and Corporal (Marcena C.) Gray, from our company, have lieutenants’ commissions in that regiment.

“The [black] 2nd Louisiana regiment is in this brigade,” he wrote. “It is a good-looking regiment, with full ranks. Two full companies of cavalry have been mustered … and from twelve to fifteen hundred [black soldiers] have enlisted in our Northern regiments.”

Dicker had studied the new recruits’ military potential. “These black regiments are composed of smart men, and I believe just as good men to fight as we have” in the 12th Maine and other state regiments, he told his father. “They learn quick, and take pride in doing their duty well. They are as brave as any white men.

“Indeed, the only trouble with these regiments will be, they will show the rebels no quarter if they get [them] into their hands,” Dicker explained. “They understand their position well, and know that, if they be taken, instant death would be their fate.”

Responding to the outrage and fear of facing escaped slaves in combat, Southern leaders ordered that captured black soldiers be enslaved immediately. Many local military leaders claimed their men would execute white officers captured while leading black troops. Such atrocities did occur; Ireland, Patten, and Spofford knew the possible death sentences awaiting them if they transferred to a black regiment.

Discussing the black Louisiana soldiers, Dicker informed his father that “they have taken up arms to free themselves, and it is freedom or death with them now.

“Will not such men fight?” he asked. “We shall see.”

Fight the black troops would, beginning at Port Hudson, La. on Wednesday, May 27, 1863. Union regiments gallantly, but uselessly charged Confederate entrenchments. Still led by black officers, the black soldiers of the 1st and 3rd Louisiana Native Guards charged three times and lost almost 200 men.

The Union’s newest soldiers did not break the Confederate defenses that day, but neither did the attacking white regiments.

And “across the hilltops that meet the northern sky,” Union veterans could descry more “long moving lines of rising dust” as winter passed into spring 1863. Black Northerners were joining the fight, too, including black Mainers from the Midcoast.

The cavalry was on the way, “coming [for] our union to restore.”

Maine State Archives Photo
After joining Co. B, 3rd Maine Infantry, Rufus Crockett rose in rank to assume a first sergeant’s responsibilities. When an Army courtmartial sacked the company’s commanding officer for cowardice at Fredericksburg, Crockett lobbied Maine Gov. Abner Coburn for promotion to that position. Coburn bypassed him at that time, but soon recommended Crockett for a commission in the 81st United States Colored Troops. Crockett later became a captain.

After the Army sacked Capt. Edwin Batchelder for cowardice during the Battle of Fredericksburg, Gov. Abner Coburn sought a replacement to lead Co. B, 3rd Maine Infantry.

He lacked no applicants, including Sgt. Rufus Crockett, a battle-hardened noncom who felt “deserving and competent to have a commission” to command Co. B. “I have been in every Battle which the [3rd Maine] Regt has been in,” Crockett wrote Coburn from Camp Pitcher, Va. on Friday, Jan. 16, 1863. He had also acted “as [Co. B’s] 1st Sergt for months at a time.”

But Crockett had to get in line for promotion; every time an officer’s position became vacant in a Maine unit during the Civil War, ambitious men waved their hands and hollered, “Me! Me! Me!”

And the governor appointing men to fill those vacancies paid attention to junior officers first.

An officer’s commission gained a man prestige, social status, “and [an] increase [in] my pay which I much need,” Crockett informed Coburn. And a commission would “somewhat lighten my load on the march” because enlisted men carried their clothing and gear on their backs; officers tossed their baggage into wagons.

Crockett believed he was qualified to replace his craven captain. “I have faithfully performed my duty as a private, Corpl and as Sergeant,” he assured Coburn. “How well I have discharged my duty under fire, I leave others to tell you.

“I have done all the [administrative] business of the Co. since our first Battle at Bull Run,” Crockett wrote. He acknowledged “that Col. [Moses Lakeman] may have his favorite, but I can stand erect and say that by Right it belongs to me.”

The “Hon. J.L. Stevens of Augusta will inform you as to my Worthiness,” Crockett assured Coburn.

Maine State Archives Photo
Desiring a commission as a major or a lieutenant colonel, 37-year-old Bethel lawyer O’Neil W. Robinson Jr. quietly asked his business contacts to lobby Maine Gov. Israel Washburn for him in 1861. Ultimately Robinson received a commission as captain of the 4th Maine Battery, which he raised and then took to war. (Maine State Archives Photo)

Maine men scrambled for available officer slots as the first state units coalesced in 1861 — and self-promotion continued throughout the war. When 37-year-old Bethel attorney O’Neil W. Robinson Jr. sought a commission in autumn 1861, supporters lobbied Gov. Israel Washburn by writing him en masse.

According to Sidney Pinkham, “Mr. Robinson has all the requisite qualifications for an efficient officer … should he undertake to enlist the men for a Battery, I have no doubt he would succeed.”

On Monday, Oct. 7, Benjamin Freeman informed Washburn that Robinson, “a lawyer and a gentleman of wealth & mind and also a Jamesin (sic) Democrat, is desirous of serving his country on the tented field.”

Freeman referred to the so-called “Jameson Democrats,” Maine Democrats who supported the war and took their name from Charles Jameson, former 2nd Maine Infantry commander and an 1861 gubernatorial candidate. The Republican Washburn would understand that Robinson was a Union loyalist despite being a Democrat.

O’Neil W. Robinson Jr. had a particular goal in mind; he asked Freeman “to inquire if the places of Lieut.[anant] Col.[onel] or Major for the eleventh [infantry] regiment was filled.” If other men already held those slots, then Robinson would gladly accept a similar rank with “one of the Regts. yet to be formed from this state.”

Writing with a shaky hand on Tuesday, Nov. 12, R.K. Goodenow of Paris revealed to Washburn that “I have known” Robinson “for the period of ten or fifteen years.” A Bowdoin College graduate and “a lawyer of good standing in this [Oxford] county,” Robinson would be successful “in getting up a company, if the command of one of the batteries … should be tendered him.”

As had Freeman, Goodenow reminded the Republican Washburn that while Robinson “was always a democrat,” he was “a high minded & honorable one.” Robinson had “supported heartily & energetically the ticket headed by Col. Jameson at our last September [1861] election.

“He is a man of great physical power & of endurance, & would fight like a tiger,” Goodenow wrote.

“Having been personally acquainted with Mr. Robinson it gives me great pleasure to say that he possesses all the necessary qualifications for the position he desires & I trust he will receive it,” John I. Perry assured Washburn from Paris on Thursday, Nov. 14.

“His social position is such that I think men would as readily enlist under him as any man in Maine,” C.W. Walton wrote Washburn about Robinson from Paris on Monday, Nov. 18.

Robinson got his wish: Washburn appointed him a captain and tapped him to command the 4th Maine Battery. Robinson recruited men for his new command; joining him in that endeavor were Matthew Coffin from Skowhegan, Hamlin Eaton from Kent’s Hill, the Rev. Lucius M.S. Haynes from Augusta, and Charles White from Skowhegan.

For their efforts, these four men also received lieutenants’ commissions from Washburn.

Unfortunately for another would-be officer, the 4th Maine Battery slots were full. Writing from North Anson on Monday, Sept. 30, 1861, George C. Getchell had informed Washburn that “Oren O. Vittum of Concord … is anxious to obtain an appointment as an officer in some of the military companies now organizing.

“I have been long acquainted with Mr. Vittum and consider that he would be well qualified … and I shall be much gratified if you will please to give him an appointment,” Getchell wrote.

Washburn appointed Vittum as sergeant for the 4th Maine Battery’s First Section, comprising a cannon, Vittum, two corporals, and 13 enlisted men. This section went to war with the battery, which fought at Cedar Mountain in August 1862.

Not many months passed before officer vacancies opened in the 4th Maine Battery. Haynes was honorably discharged for disability on Sept. 23, 1862; writing Washburn from Maryland Heights near Harpers Ferry on Oct. 9, Robinson sought “to urge upon your excellency the promotion of Lts. Hamlin F. Eaton, Charles W. White, and Mathew B. Coffin, each of whom has well earned the promotion asked for.”

With these officers promoted “up” a rank, “there is now one vacancy in the number of Lieuts. in this battery,” Robinson wrote Washburn on Oct. 13. Robinson recommended that Sgt. Melville C. Kimball, the battery’s quartermaster, should be promoted to junior lieutenant.

A Bethel resident, Kimball “is a very likely young man, smart and ambitious,” John Lynch lobbied Washburn from Portland on Oct. 14. “From my personal knowledge of his character and the representations of his Captain I take pleasure in recommending him to the favorable consideration of your excellency.”

And so the self-promotion to gain promotion continued throughout the war. Kimball worked his way up to senior second lieutenant before resigning from the 4th Maine Battery on Dec. 21, 1864.

O’Neil W. Robinson Jr. remained a captain. He led the battery for almost three years until he fell ill. Sent home to recuperate, he died at Waterford on Sunday, July 17, 1864.

Unfortunately for Rufus Crockett, Moses Lakeman recommended a junior officer to fill Batchelder’s position with Co. B, 3rd Maine Infantry. Yet Crockett still attained his dream; Abner Coburn offered him a first lieutenant’s commission with a black infantry regiment being raised in the Deep South.

Resigning from the 3rd Maine, Crockett joined the 9th Regiment Corps d’Afrique in Louisiana. Among the first black regiments created in that state, the 9th later became the 81st United States Colored Troops.

His administrative and battlefield experience stood him in good stead; the sergeant who wanted to be a lieutenant ultimately became Capt. Rufus Crockett, commander of Co. K, 81st USCT.